Dance Dance Revelation
by mshcherbatskaya
Summary: Some people can't dance, and some people people shouldn't. Second in sequence starting with Wet Work


Atton would follow Pala anywhere, as long as he could walk _behind_ her. If she trusted him to watch her back, he'd go ahead watch her backside as well--complimentary, free of charge, even. That's just the sort of generous guy he was. Getting to follow her and her underwear around had certainly changed his opinion of his luck on Peragus, and even the mining suit wasn't bad. Cut for a man, it was just a bit small through the hips on her, which pulled the otherwise dull fabric nice and tight over her butt. Very nice.

But after Peragus, it was just robes, and robes, and robes, and maybe a little armor and more robes. She might as well have been wearing an environment suit for all the good it did him. Which was why the dancer's outfit was a gift from the heart of the ever-loving Force itself. True, she was still wearing the omnipresent robe over the scant red-and-gold costume, but that wasn't going to last.

Pala and the Twi'lek, Domo, walked a few steps ahead, while Mira and Atton brought up the rear, so to speak. The Twi'lek was giving her a quick run-down of Vogga's likes and dislikes as they approached the compound, as though that it would make any difference. No one who'd spent more than 15 minutes in a cantina would ever mistake her for a dancer. Her step was efficient rather than slinky, and instead of letting her sandy hair play over her shoulders, it was still caught up in the same sloppy ponytail with the stray locks tucked back over her ears. Not that anyone would care. She was an eyeful just standing still, and she had a sort of bounce to her walk that made him wish he could see a bit more of it just now.

Mira fell back and deliberately stepped on Atton's heel.

"Ow! Watch it!" He stumbled and hopped along on one foot, trying to twist his boot back into place.

"I'll watch it if you _quit_ watching it!"

"Watching what?"

"Don't you even give me that," Mira snapped under her breath. "I can't believe you! You're acting like some slobbering kath hound! Can't you even _try_ to act like a decent human being?"

Oh, give it a rest already. Mira was so obsessed with watching him watch Pala, he'd swear she was jealous. Of which one, though, and did it matter? Not really. "Hey, I'm walking on my hind legs, what more do you want?"

"Wipe the drool off your chin. And remember, I've got a Bothan stun-stick and I'm not afraid to use it."

"Yeah, I heard about you and your stun-sticks," he muttered as they rounded the corner into Vogga's chambers. "Sorry, babe, but that rough stuff isn't my scene." She tried to give him another heel stomp but he was ready for her, and the formal introductions kept her from taking another shot.

Cut short by the Hutt's impatience, Domo bowed and backed out of the room, waving Pala forward. She shrugged out of her robe and handed it to the Twi'lek. Finally, show time. The outfit left almost nothing to the imagination, and Atton had a very good imagination.

Her body was just like he knew it would be, slim, graceful, and powerfully athletic. Let other guys chase around after Twi'lek girls who couldn't see their own feet past their cleavage. In his experience, it was always the fit ones that were tigers in the sack. A lifetime of lightsaber training had rounded her shoulders and arms with smooth muscle, and the graceful line of her neck and back made him want to run his tongue all the way down it and take a bite out of her flawless ass. And her legs, don't even start on the legs, because they went on forever. They were so long, she could probably wrap them around him twice.

"_Stun! Stick!_" Mira hissed, but he didn't hear. He was too busy thinking how much he'd like to lick shots of juma out of that belly-button. Then the music came on, Pala started her dance, and Atton forgot everything else, even that sweet little belly-button. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

She was. So. Bad.

He wasn't sure if it was stage fright or just a terminal case of Jedi tight-ass. Nobody who could move like she did should be that bad. She shuffled from side to side, staring at the ground, swinging her arms as though they'd gone to sleep, and if any of her movements had _any_ relationship to the music at all, they were like third cousins twice removed on the mother's side. Mira was staring too, frozen like she'd accidentally hit herself with her own stun-stick.

The performance was cut mercifully short by the Hutt's snores and the Twi'lek's embarrassed excuses. He handed Pala her robe, made a curt bow, and left the room without saying another word. Pala watched him go, then turned back to them.

"So, how was it?" she asked tentatively.

"Wow!" Mira replied brightly, "That was some dance!"

"Really?"

"Really! I didn't know you could move like that. You dance like nobody's business."

Pala let out a little sigh of relief, and turned to Atton, who was not smirking, and not laughing, and totally not managing to maintain his pazaak face.

"What?"

Nothing.

"What!?"

Force help him, because he couldn't help himself. "I have been in every cantina from here to Coruscant, and that? That was the worst dance I have _ever_ seen."

"It wasn't that bad!"

"He _fell asleep!_"

"Domo says he always does that." Pala's ears were pink with mortification.

"He was being polite."

"Unlike _some_ people." growled Mira, giving him a covert poke with the stunner.

"I suppose you think you could have done better," Pala replied hotly. Well, now, this was new. Where'd that Jedi reserve run off to? He liked this a lot better.

"I couldn't have done any worse."

Pala, with her Jedi garb thrown over her dancer's dress like a bathrobe, four empty juma shots on the table and one in her hand, was a cheap drunk. Atton, on the other hand, surrounded by a carnage of empty glasses, was a very, very expensive drunk. Still, it was a bargain at twice the price to see him standing on the table, bumping and grinding with his jacket wrapped around his head, using the sleeves as improvised _lekku_, and Pala laughing so hard she nearly fell out of her chair.

Everyone, well the organics anyway, had been invited but only Mira and Mical tagged along. Bao-Dur, surprise surprise, had work to do, Visas was too blinded by the tumult of the cantina, and Kreia had refused to dignify him with an answer, which was fine because Atton wasn't particularly interested in being dignified. Obviously.

"...OK, OK, OK, and, so, there was this one chick on Yavin--oh man, she was so incredibly hot! You would not believe, she had this sorta...damn! She was so, _so, soooo_...ah... OK! But, and, so, she could do this thing! Y'know? Where she'd kinda, um...like this...right? And..."

Mira stood back out of the blast radius of Atton's inevitable fall off the table, casually swinging her stunner and trying to scowl. Mical hovered protectively behind Pala, wine glass in hand, a complete gizka in the headlights.

"Hey, handsome," Atton cocked an eyebrow at him and flirtatiously tossed one "lekku"over his shoulder, "wanna lap dance?"

Even in the dim cantina light, Mical went visibly scarlet. Because Pala was doubled over with convulsive giggles or because Atton hit a nerve? Couldn't tell, couldn't care. The kid held his ground, though, Atton had to give him that.

"Thank you," Mical said, bowing graciously, "but despite your considerable allurements, I'm afraid I must decline."

"Allurements?" Atton whooped, "Al_lure_ments?! Hey, I've got allu--!" He staggered, caught an empty glass under one heel and almost went down. "I've got allurements! Maybe I should pack in this spacer crap and be a dancer. Charm the ladies out of their credits with my allurements. Whaddya think?"

"I think you'd walk out of the bar with a couple of cold quarter-creds clinking around in your g-string, that's what I think," Mira shot back.

Now, Atton expected Mical to act like a stuck-up schoolboy, and he expected Mira to give him non-stop static morning to night, but nobody but nobody expected to see Pala sway to her feet and tuck a ten-cred into the front of Atton's pants.

"There you go!" She grinned as she lowered herself unsteadily back into her seat. "Best wishes on your future career!"

Atton didn't fall off the table, exactly. He somehow managed to flip the whole thing over and land smack on his money-maker with everything on top of him.

"Oh! Oh no! Are you OK?" Pala's brow furrowed with concern but she didn't stop laughing. He took her offered hand and wobbled more or less upright.

"I'm alright. I'm alright!" he called to the bartender who looked deeply concerned about his welfare. "No, really, I'm fine!"

"Maybe you should sit down," Pala pulled him down towards a seat.

"That's a very good idea." Atton plopped himself down in her lap. "So, big spender, you gonna buy this lil' ol' dancer a drink?"

"I think you've had enough to drink," she said, smiling up at him.

Her hazel eyes were bright, if a little unfocused, and her high, fine cheekbones were rosy with alcohol. Atton was a gambling man, not afraid to go all in. He brushed his thumb over the nape of her neck. "Then how 'bout we go into the back room for a little private dance?"

She rolled her eyes and shoved him off her lap. "OK, everybody, I think we better get going."

He totally drew a 27 on that hand.

When she helped him up, she was stone cold sober, emphasis on the "cold". Some Jedi could purge their systems of poisons and intoxicants at will--apparently, she was one of them. Tying her robe back into place, she turned and walked out of the cantina, leaving Mira and Mical to escort Atton's drunk ass back to the _Hawk_.

"Nice flying there, Ace," Mira said. "Very alluring."

"Shuddup. It was a _joke_, you know, one of those things that are _funny_ if you don't have a lightsaber stuck up your ass."

"Really, Atton," said Mical reprovingly, "that...suggestion was a bit crass, even for you, don't you think?"

"Crass? Even for me--_what?! Crass?_ You tell me, kid--" Atton jabbed him in the chest hard enough to make him wince, "you tell me, when was the last time _you_ made her laugh, huh? Huh? That's right. _You _ make her a saint, but _I _make her laugh. So you and your _crass_ can go space yourselves." He turned around and headed back down the walkway.

"Where are you going?"

"Back to the cantina," he snarled, "for a few more laughs."


End file.
